
Leopold Museum,
Vienna
Vienna
Seated Female Semi-Nude in Patterned Dress, Her Head Resting on Her Right Knee
1910
(Baumgarten near Vienna/Vienna 1862–1918 Vienna)
Alice Strobl linked this unusual motif by Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) of a seated nude with her head resting on her knee with the mourning female protagonist from the group symbolizing life in the artist’s painting [*Death and Life*](/en/object/629). While Klimt chose this posture in the painting to express the figure’s melancholy mood, he used it in this drawing exclusively for erotic effect, seeing as the spread legs afford beholders a voyeuristic view of the woman’s genitals. The elaborate pattern of the dress, rendered using orange and blue crayon, highlights the artist’s intention to draw attention to this part of the body. Klimt exhibited a large number of similar erotic drawings in 1910 at the art salon Miethke and was reproached for producing pornography. The detailed strokes and use of color through crayons, as well as the balanced composition, make the drawing appear like a pictorial, autonomous work of art.
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Nachlass Gustav Klimt, Wien (1918); (1)
Dr. Rudolf Leopold, Wien (vor 1982-1994); (2)
Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung, Wien (1994).
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